Betting on Hope (11 page)

“Wha—?” big Julie said, struggling to sit up. “What’s the matter, Baby?” And then realizing who he was talking to, added, too late, “Marilyn. Sweetheart.”

Marilyn picked up the lamp from the side table. “You lying—” she heaved the lamp at him, “cheating—” she picked up the clock radio, “two-timing—” threw it at him, “scum!” She picked up a small vase holding an artificial flower arrangement and held it before her, vibrating in fury.

“You brought that tramp out here! You’ve been staying with her upstairs! Don’t deny it! I
saw
her!” She pitched the flower vase at him, looking for something else to throw.

Big Julie had dodged the lamp purely by instinct and had fully awakened by the time the clock radio whizzed by his head. Training and experience kicked in, and he watched his spouse warily, ducking flying objects as they smashed on the wall behind him. Marilyn had lousy aim, but if she hit him she could do some damage. He didn’t want to get hurt—especially not if injuries to sensitive parts of his anatomy cut into his time with Baby.

But what a throw! Marilyn was putting a lot of force behind her delivery, and if she wasn’t getting results, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Her skin was flushed from the effort. A deep V of sweat stained the front of her leotard. Her pink athletic socks sagged around her ankles, her carefully tinted red hair escaped its pony tail and flew around her head. She was pulsating with fury.

“Now, Marilyn,” Big Julie wheedled, evading the flying flower arrangement. “Sweetheart.”

“Don’t ‘Sweetheart’ me,” Marilyn yelled.

Big Julie was getting turned on by all of Marilyn’s passion and sweat. Not to mention the way the edge of the exercise leotard bit into the curve of her ass. If it was one thing he liked, it was a passionate woman, and Marilyn, okay, she was meaty, but her curves still had plenty of velocity, and she was wearing a skin-tight leotard, her nipples showing through it like hard little points on a pencil. Her rump was quivering, her thighs were trembling, and best of all, there were damn few elastic polymers in sight. A woman in full bounce was a glorious thing.

Marilyn picked up the bedside phone and pulled her arm back, ready to throw.

Big Julie hadn’t been married for twenty-five years and been a made guy for the same without learning something about self-preservation. He rolled out of bed away from Marilyn’s aim and thundered around the end of the bed. Marilyn dropped the phone and turned to run, but Big Julie tackled her, flinging her onto the bed and jumping on top of her. Marilyn tried to knee him in the balls, but Big Julie was ready for that, clamping her legs with his and grabbing the one hand of Marilyn’s he could reach. She swacked him on the head with the other, but she didn’t do much damage because his head was plenty hard and now he was getting hard elsewhere, too, which also was a glorious thing.

Marilyn pulled back in shock and then struggled harder, but Big Julie grasped Marilyn’s sweat-soaked boob with his hand and pinched her nipple. It gave him a nice rush, not as nice as Baby, but still really, really good, and when he realized that he couldn’t get his hand inside the leotard, he grabbed it by the neck and yanked, tearing it open and leaving exposed a naked breast the size of a small cantaloupe.

He gazed at it, feeling his breath quicken. Marilyn’s boobs weren’t anything like Baby’s. Baby’s firm titties stood up straight when she was on her back, thanks to surgical intervention, but Marilyn’s exposed breast slid sideways on her chest. It was bigger and pinker than Baby’s and a lot softer. He put his hand on it and molded it, seeing how her generous flesh swelled out from between his fingers as he squeezed.

Marilyn had stopped struggling and was staring at him in shock but not horror, her breath coming in shallow gasps, the skin on her chest rosy with exertion and extra blood flow. Big Julie took note of the change in posture, activity level, breathing, and speech, and took advantage, settling himself more comfortably and letting her know with other movements just how vigorous and refreshed he was feeling this morning after a good night’s sleep. In a very short time, he had the satisfaction of seeing Marilyn’s eyes close. She sighed—a melting sigh—and when her back arched, Big Julie smiled in satisfaction, knowing that he was about to enjoy a very nice marital workout.

Some time later, Marilyn got up to take a shower, careful not to wake her spouse, who was gently snoring. Her hair was a mess. She had beard burn on her chest. But she felt great. Her skin tingled. Her thighs throbbed with a gentle ache she hadn’t felt in months, if not years. Her vagina hummed. Every nerve ending sat up and saluted.

She stepped under the warm water, bathing quickly and washing her hair. When she got out, she combed her hair and put on one of the bathrobes that the hotel thoughtfully provided its guests before she went back into the bedroom to dress. When she stepped into the luxurious space, now strewn with discarded athletic clothing, Big Julie was awake and watching her. She felt the hum escalate to a full choir belting out the Hallelujah Chorus.

Big Julie watched Marilyn come back from the bathroom, her wet hair hanging in dark hanks around her shoulders. The bulky white bathrobe was crossed tightly over her chest and knotted around her middle. Marilyn right out of the shower looked nothing like the hot, ferocious, no-holds-barred, wild woman whose clothes Big Julie had torn off just a short time ago. She looked, in fact, like the Pillsbury dough boy if the Pillsbury dough boy had fallen into the dishwasher and survived the pot-scrubbing cycle.

“Julie,” Marilyn said. Her eyelids drooped as she looked him over, but her mouth looked good, soft and slightly swollen. “We should do that more often.
Way
more often.”

Big Julie felt his heart sink. Under the best of circumstances, like say if Baby was wearing her black leather chaps and spurs and riding him harder than a cowgirl in a rodeo barrel racing competition, he could go two full rounds before he was knocked out. But with Marilyn looking like Mortitia dragged from a lake, he was done.

“That was great, honey!” he said, trying for enthusiasm. He jumped out of bed and pulled on his shorts. “I could eat a bear after that. What do you want for breakfast? They got everything here.”

Marilyn turned to the dresser, disappointed, and pulled open the bottom drawer.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she said, pawing through her clothes. “Eggs, maybe. Coffee.”

Big Julie grabbed the phone that Marilyn hadn’t thrown at him to call in the order, but when he looked up to ask Marilyn when should they bring it, he stopped. Marilyn was still bent over the drawer. The bathrobe was clinging to her butt and stuck between her thighs. He remembered once with Baby in and out of the hot tub, when her robe had been sticking just like that. And that hadn’t been once with Baby so much as three times, he’d been so damn hot for her, what with the water and everything.

Just thinking about Baby and the hot tub, he felt himself stir underneath the shorts.

Marilyn’s bathrobe gapped at the chest, and Big Julie could see a curve of breast. It looked nothing like one of Baby’s tits, which were round like halves of a baseball, big and symmetrical. When Big Julie rubbed his face on them, it was like his nose was gliding over a ski jump covered with soft, new snow, they were so firm but her skin was so delicate. When Marilyn was bending over, though, her tits looked more like Japanese eggplants, full, but more oblong. Except Marilyn’s tits weren’t purple like Japanese eggplants.

He imagined his face buried in the valley of Baby’s perfect tits. He could just about smell the new snow now, his tongue reaching out to catch a fresh snowflake.

“Open your bathrobe a little,” Big Julie said, his voice husky. “Let me see you more.”

Marilyn blushed. “You are
bad,
Big Julie,” she said, but she loosened the tie on her bathrobe and pulled on the crossover fabric. She glanced at him, at the ski pole in his shorts.

“Bend over like that again,” Big Julie asked. “Like you were. I like to look at you like that.”

“I think you’re ready to do a little more than just look, Julie,” Marilyn said, crossing over to the bed.

Big Julie thought about ski slopes and watched Marilyn approach, his eyes half-closed.

“Oh, Baby,” he said. “I am ready to jump.”

Chapter 8

By the time Hope shuffled yawning into the kitchen, looking for her first cup of coffee, Faith and Amber were in the kitchen making waffles for breakfast.

“We just need about another five minutes and we’ll be ready to eat,” Faith said.

“I wish we could put recipes for waffles in the vegetable boxes,” Amber said. “At least that’s not hard to mess up.”

“What you do is fine,” Suzanne said, coming into the kitchen and giving her granddaughter a smacking kiss before glancing at Hope, who had pulled a chair over to the computer and turned it on. “What are you doing, Sweetie?”

“Just looking something up quick,” Hope said.

“Before breakfast? What’s so important?” Faith asked, pulling up the cover of the waffle iron and turning out a perfect golden orb, fragrant with butter and sugar.

“I met a card player yesterday,” Hope said. “I think I must have met him before. He said no, but his name is so familiar.”

“Tanner Wingate?” Faith asked.

“He said he met you,” Amber said, perking up.

Hope looked at them, astonished. “How did
you
guys meet Tanner Wingate?”

“He was in the Desert Dunes when we were delivering the veg,” Faith said.

“He got a snack from Kenji. He’s the chef,” Amber said. “Unagi. I had some. It was fantastic. He’s cool. Tanner, I mean. And Kenji is, too.”

“Tanner’s cool?” Hope typed Tanner’s name into the search engine and saw more than a dozen hits scroll down the screen. She clicked on the first one. “He’s a card player.”

“He’s
very
cool,” Amber said. “He knows stuff.”

He knows how to cheat at cards
, Hope thought
.
She started to read the first article, a news story from a Detroit newspaper. “College Student Arrested in Card Scam” the headline read. She skimmed it, then went to the next one, as the story came back to her.

She’d been just a kid at the time, thirteen or fourteen years old, but in Vegas, the story had been all over the papers. Back then, she’d admired the daredevil teenaged card shark who’d taken his tricks on the road to Atlantic City and Las Vegas, cheating the casinos and card rooms out of almost a million dollars. His sleight of hand had been so subtle that it had taken the security systems months to catch him. But finally, they did.

The kid’s high-priced lawyer had used his client’s youth to play on the judge’s sympathy, and ultimately William Tanner Wingate had received only probation for his crimes, plus restitution to the casinos. The restitution had been the easy part. He hadn’t spent any of the money.

The probation would have been harder.
Twenty years.
Hope looked at the date on the news story. It had all happened nineteen years ago, and Tanner Wingate was
still
on probation—would be on probation for another year, it looked like.

He was probably still cheating, too. She’d seen him practicing those card tricks at the bar, and in her experience, once a cheat, always a cheat. A leopard couldn’t change his spots.

At least that explained why she’d recognized his name. As a nineteen-year-old, he’d probably been the most famous card player in the country.

“Breakfast is ready,” Faith said, putting a platter on the table.

Amber put the pitcher of maple syrup on the table. “What did you find out about Tanner?”

Hope switched screens before Amber could see any of the headlines.

“Not much. Come on, let’s eat.”

There wasn’t any reason to sully Amber’s heroes. After all, she’d probably never see him again.

Hope was back at the casino, ready to play, by eleven a.m. That would give her a solid four hours before she had to take Baby shopping
again
at three-thirty. Her remaining chips dug in her jeans pocket. She would not fixate on the two thousand dollars she’d lost yesterday. That was old news. Today she’d start fresh.

She met Marty at the gaudy floral arrangement in the hotel lobby as they’d arranged. When she arrived, he was already there, sitting on one of the hotel’s small, gilt chairs, drinking coffee out of a paper cup and looking as out of place as a bookie at a dance recital.

“Little Hope,” he said, when he saw her. He patted her shoulder and smiled affectionately. “Hey. Let’s go.”

“Weary told me about last night,” he said as they entered the casino and headed for the card room. “Sorry I couldn’t make it. I was in the middle of something.”

A straight flush,
Hope thought, smiling. It was probably just as well Marty hadn’t seen her meltdown, too. Fortunately the women’s restroom off the card room was way too small to have accommodated all the uncles at the same time. If they’d all squeezed in there, they’d have looked like a Marx Brothers routine.

“But I was thinking. About the two large,” Marty said. “Especially now, when you gotta pump up your stake.”